


William

by AlabasterInk



Series: Williams [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Billy Hargrove is not a nice guy, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Will Byers Has Powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-19 02:30:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19347709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlabasterInk/pseuds/AlabasterInk
Summary: The abuse explained a lot about Billy, but it did not excuse him.





	William

**Author's Note:**

> So, I just want to preface this by saying that I really like Billy as a villain, but he is a legitimately horrible person. And while I was rewatching the show, I realized that he and Will Byers have a lot of parallels. Whether that's intentional or not we'll have to wait and see, but I found it interesting and wanted to write a little something about it. So here it is!
> 
> I don't own anything. 
> 
> Enjoy!

William Byers was not so out of it as to not notice the bruise blossomed around Lucas’ neck. It was an ugly, molted thing, all purple lumps painting a dark hand around his friend’s flesh. The fingers were thick and obvious, four on one side with the thumb closest to his jugular as if his assailant had gotten some sort of perverse pleasure out of feeling Lucas’ pulse die. Will had seen such marks before – on his mother, his brother, and even himself when Lonnie was particularly angry. He knew how much they hurt. It was a wonder Lucas could even speak.

He didn’t ask about it; he got the feeling Lucas wouldn’t tell. Will knew he never did. It wasn’t until later that night, after the celebrations had died down and most of the party had fallen asleep, that he pulled Mike aside. He asked, with some hesitancy, what had happened, and Mike, with equal hesitancy, answered back.

“It was Billy,” Mike whispered in an undertone.

Will filed the name away.

* * *

William Hargrove was Max’s stepbrother. Everyone called him Billy. He was taller than Jonathan and bulkier than Steve and walked around as if Hawkins was a particularly disgusting bug to be squashed beneath his feet. The only time he smiled was when he was hurting somebody and it was always tinged with the razor-sharp quality of a predator. To Will Byers, he was the human equivalent of a Demogorgon.

It was January when Will first noticed another bruise. This time it was on Max. It peaked out from under her shirt, a large discoloration that would have looked out of place if her sweater weren’t as purple as the injury. A strategic choice if Will had to guess. At a quick glance, anyone looking would have assumed it was just a trick of the light.

Max caught his eye over the lunch table and blanched. She pulled her sweater down to cover the bruise and returned to her sandwich, determinately not looking at him. Will lowered his eyes, polished off his apple, and said nothing.

* * *

Steve had a black eye that February. It was plump as a plum and made him a celebrity at the high school for all of one morning before people learned it was because he and Billy had a fight and Steve was on the losing end. Then, it just made him a target. He scoffed and walked Dustin home that day only because the eye made it impossible for him to drive. No one knew what the fight was about.

Will watched Steve as he walked extra close to Dustin, one hand on his shoulder and good eye glaring at the mass of students. He was like a sentry, guarding the younger boy from harm. Every so often he would steer Dustin in a slightly different direction from normal, covering it up with a jab or a shove. Will was grateful.

He liked Steve, but he would rather the older teen bruised than Dustin dead in a ditch.

* * *

One day El and Max hated each other, the next they were best friends. Will didn’t understand girls, much less girls like Max and El, and he wasn’t about to start trying. It was just nice to see them getting along. Still, when Hopper brought El over to the Byers’ place for one of her rare visits he couldn’t help but notice the new figure that had joined _Papa_ in her so-called “revenge pictures.”

“Big brothers are bad,” she mumbled, stabbing the new figure with a red crayon.

Will bit his lip. “Not Jonathan,” he said, as he took the red back and brought it down to color the sky. “Or Lucas.”

The girl tilted her head in thought. She paused in her drawing for a split second before plucking the red out of his hand. “Not them,” she agreed, the words _but someone_ hanging between them. Will hummed.

El finished off her picture by adding a leather jacket and black Camaro.

* * *

Max stabbed Billy with a syringe. She then used Steve’s bat to threaten his family jewels. Will didn’t learn this until April when Dustin finally spilled the beans. His friends had tentatively started telling him about what happened during that too long week he was possessed, moving in fits and starts as if afraid doing otherwise would break him. It was never much, and only when they were all feeling particularly giddy, lest it spoil the mood.

Will liked hearing it from their perspective. It helped drown out the itch in the back of his head and the whispers that still clouded his mind on particularly cold days. Mike was the best storyteller, but Will preferred Dustin and Lucas’ tale if only because Will had few memories of it. Mike’s was still a little too close to home.

They had yet to tell him why Max stabbed Billy; Dustin had sort of danced around the subject. It wasn’t until Lucas’ fingers twitched towards his neck that Will made the connection. A shadow in the back of his mind roiled at the thought and Will hid the growing darkness with another question about Max’s heroics.

Apparently, she threatened him. She warned Billy off from her friends.

Will thought of the bruise under her sweater and Steve’s black eye and pushed the darkness down further.

* * *

Will had never actually met Billy and he hadn’t been in a rush to fix that. He knew him only by reputation and the quick glances he managed to glean as Max jumped into his car. There was something not right about him, something that made the hairs on Will’s neck stand on end. He was quite happy to keep Billy at a distance.

It was unfortunate then, that on the first day of summer vacation Will and Lucas were the only ones free. El was still stuck in the cabin, Mike was visiting relatives, and Dustin had left for camp. The only one left to join their group was Max, but she still hadn’t managed to raise the money for a Supercom and Lucas wasn’t suicidal enough to knock on her front door. Naturally then, it fell to Will to invite her out to play.

Lucas hid behind a tree as Will approached the house. He knocked – once, twice – and wondered if it were possible for anyone to hear him with the music blaring inside. When no one answered, he tried again. And again. And again. Until the door swung open and he was met with the furious visage of Billy Hargrove complete with a darkening handprint struck across his face. It was swollen and thick and far too large to belong to a woman.

Billy sneered, and Will only managed to squeak out a quick, “Max,” before the suffocating ugliness that surrounded the teenager gave way to allow his sister through. He glared at them and shut the door with a bang, catching Max on the back of her shoes. She stumbled and grumbled under her breath, and quickly dragged Will from where he’d frozen on the porch step.

“Hurry up, Byers!”

He thought of the bruise on Billy’s cheek and bit his lip till it bled.

* * *

Billy Hargrove was full of hate. It blazed inside him like an inferno, always one step away from getting out of control. Will hated being around him. As if their first meeting was some sort of signal, Will now saw Billy everywhere. He was at the store and the park and the abandoned lot. He was both actively avoiding Max and stalking her, to the point that Will had taken to avoiding her too. It hurt, because Will liked Max, but the festering darkness inside her brother made it hard for him to think.

He was a canvas of wounds. They oozed resentment and rage and a sort of buzzing electricity that Will found both familiar and sickening. Whispers flittered across Will’s mind every time they crossed paths, raspy little voices urging him to get the pain out in any way he could. Will always shook the whispers away. They sounded like _Him_. _Him_ , and Lonnie, and Will Byers himself, all mixed together.

Will always ran after that, but never before he caught a glimpse of Billy smoking a cigarette and glaring at the world as if all he wanted to do was watch it burn.

* * *

Billy became a lifeguard at the community pool over the summer and Will noticed the way he shied away from the other men that frequented the area. He would flinch, minutely, and move closer to the gaggle of women tittering over how handsome he was. Billy thrived around women. He ate up their attention and charmed them with platitudes he didn’t mean. Will almost felt bad for them; they couldn’t see the cruelty under his skin the way Will could.

Electricity sparked between them – those women and Billy – both completely different and yet disgustingly similar to the electricity Dustin was always going on about. Will didn’t think it was the same thing. Nothing between them felt like love.

It hurt. It wasn’t the warm buzz he sometimes felt between Hopper and his mom, nor the passionate zing between Mike and El. It wasn’t even the playful jolt of a joy buzzer that always cropped up whenever he was around Lucas and Max. Billy’s electricity was searing. It was like standing in the middle of a storm, where only the lucky ones would escape unscathed and everyone else would be struck dead.

Billy was like lightning; beautiful at a distance, but never up close.

* * *

Will never met Neil Hargrove, and unlike Billy that didn’t change. He only knew his name because Max liked to curse it under her breath. She hated Neil in a way Will never could Lonnie, and resented him in a way Will could.

Neil was everything Lonnie had been and everything he could have become. He was abusive and cruel and controlling, and left wounds on his children that no amount of time could ever erase. Neil was a black stain. He brewed fear and loathing in those he should have cared for, and he created a monster when he should been creating a man.

It certainly explained Billy, but it did not excuse him.

* * *

William Byers hated William Hargrove. He hated the bruises on Max’s skin, the hurt on Lucas’ face, and the threats made against his friends. He hated the darkness and the whispers and the rage that seeped from every pore. He hated Neil for his cruelty and Susan for her inaction, and he hated whatever woman had seen fit to give Billy the same name as his own.

Two Williams; boys born at the bottom of the barrel.

He wondered, sometimes, if he hated Billy for everything he had done, or because he had the audacity to be so intimately familiar. Did he hate Billy for Max’s bruises or the fact that he’d left them when he knew how much they hurt? Did he hate Billy for Lucas and Steve, or for Jonathan and himself?

There was a conglomerate of names. Sometimes they all rolled into one and sometimes they screamed strangely out of synch. Lonnie and Neil and El’s _Papa_. They’d each inflicted enough pain on their children to create monsters. Where was Billy’s excuse when there were people out there like Jonathan and Max and El who only strove for kindness?

William Byers hated William Hargrove. He hated the abuse he wore as an excuse. He hated the way Billy spat on every other person like him who had made the conscious decision to be better. He hated the way he spread that abuse when he knew how much it hurt.

But most importantly, William Byers hated William Hargrove for being so much like himself. It was like looking into the Upside Down and seeing what he could become.

Two Williams. Two monsters.

No wonder the Mind Flayer took him.

**Author's Note:**

> And there you go! Not sure how I feel about the ending, but eh. I hope you all enjoyed! Please leave a review and tell me what you thought!
> 
> Bye!


End file.
